When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,90

well as Samson and Patrick had rolled away the stone from the grave. They jumped back in terror as I groaned under the burden of a hundred pounds of burial spices.

Mary ran up the path as Peter and the others sprinted away. “He’s alive!” Mary cried.

“Something is …” Peter’s voice trembled.

“Come help me!” Mary snatched Peter’s fishing knife from his belt and, gathering her skirts, ran to me. “David! David!” She laughed and wept at the same time as she charged to the mouth of the tomb.

Others hung back, at once terrified and astonished by the sight of me standing in my shroud. I saw them motionless and wide-eyed below. All but Mary! My sister had no fear of what lay beneath the shroud.

“David! Alive! You are …”

She was breathless when she reached me. Wrapping her arms around my cocoon, she would not let me go.

“Mary,” I cried! “Cut me loose!”

She laughed and babbled and set to work with Peter’s blade. “Four days! Four days away from us, my dear brother!”

“Only four?” I marveled. “Four days?” I imagined centuries had passed in my absence. Time was nothing beyond this world.

Mary loosed my arms. “Oh, I thought my heart would break except the thought that you were with Eliza and the baby. Oh, David!” She filleted my spice-stiffened shroud like I was a giant fish. “You’re back. You’ve come back to us!” The weight of spices in the grave clothes was soon cut away.

Her joy at our reunion was not something I shared. “I saw them, Mary,” I told her quietly. “They’re all there. Waiting for us to join them.” I could not tell her the glory and beauty I had left behind. This world was a faded image of what I had experienced. “Eliza and my son. Only he’s all grown. A perfect, beautiful young man!” I worked with her to free my legs. Now others in the fearful crowd walked cautiously toward us.

“David! Our hearts were broken! Broken! It seemed so … so unfair that you, of all, would perish.”

“But Mary!” I stepped free. “I didn’t perish. I was alive, more alive … oh, the colors! Music! Mountains higher and more majestic than you could ever … Our dear ones who have gone before … they came to meet me! And so many others! How can I ever explain?”

I spotted Jesus over Mary’s shoulder. Sorrow for me filled his eyes. Of all those who witnessed my return from the vineyards of heaven to fallen earth, only Jesus knew what joy and beauty I had left behind.

Chapter 31

Word of my return to life after being dead for four days spread about the country. I could not leave home without being surrounded by a mob. The crowds wanted to see Jesus, but they also wanted to see me.

I was bemused by the attention. After all, I was the recipient of healing, not the Healer. Still, I understood their awestruck wonder.

When I had witnessed my cousin’s daughter’s illness in Capernaum, I knew Deborah was very, very ill. Ravaged by fever, her body could not keep the spark of life within it.

I watched her sink toward the abyss of the grave.

I saw her just after her last breath fled. She was dead—not sleeping, as we know sleep, but gripped by the utter stillness that banishes hope.

When Jesus returned her life to her, I was utterly dumbfounded, never dreaming I would have the same experience myself.

Jairus’s neighbors crowded around to see Deborah. Before long, Galileans from as far away as Nain journeyed to meet the young woman and hear the stories from her mother and father.

Soon afterward complete strangers, covering distances from Caesarea Maritima on the west to Caesarea Philippi in the north, converged on the tiny lakeside village.

Jesus himself had departed, but the fame of the healed ones continued.

And now I knew the truth of that for myself.

I was besieged. I had even hired some men to patrol my vineyards and orchards to keep the curious from trampling my vines or helping themselves to the early figs.

Soon enough, undeserved fame was the least of my worries.

Late one evening, after the crowds had finally given up hoping for another glimpse of me pruning my roses, there was a furtive knock at the garden gate.

My aged porter answered the summons. Nicodemus was wrapped in a cloak up to his eyes, with a hood over his head. The Pharisee was ushered into my office. When I offered him a seat, he accepted but closed the door